In 1997, Italian fashion designer and mogul Gianni Versace was flying high. He had just shot some scenes for the Spice Girls movie, Spiceworld. His business was booming. And on July 15, at the age of 50, he went out to get his morning paper at a nearby coffee shop. Little did Gianni Versace know that the scenes he had shot for that movie would not be shown. Little did he know that he would never make it back in to his own home.
Gianni Versace was shot dead by spree killer Andrew Cunanan on the steps of his Miami Beach mansion. No on knows why, if there is even a reason why. Cunanan murdered at least five people over a three-month period. Just a few days after he shot Versace, he turned his gun on himself.
Now that Miami Beach mansion, once called Casa Casuarina, is up for auction, according to the Daily Mail. Originally built in 1930, the mansion has ten bedrooms, a 54-foot long mosaic pool lined with 24-karat gold, many frescos, statues, arched doorways and an open air courtyard.
The home has been up for sale for over a year, but it has not moved. The asking price was cut over the course of the year from $125 million to $75 million. And now it will be auctioned off.
Versace left considerable wealth to his neices and nephews in his will, but had no children of his own. He had also willed $26,000 a month to his domestic partner, as well as the right to live in any of Versace’s houses that he wanted, in Italy or the United States. But, as will happen when a rich person dies, family interference cut his partner out of much of what he had been left.
This particular mansion is now called Villa by Barton G, and has had some refurbish work done. But a lot of what can be seen inside is still very ostentatious and in Versace’s taste.